Table of Contents Table of Contents Introduction... iv Time Line...1 Roger Williams...6 Benjamin Franklin...9 James Otis...12 Joseph Warren... 15 Ethan Allen... 18 Thomas Paine...21 Francis Marion...24 John Jay...27 Tecumseh...30 Zebulon Pike...33 Black Hawk...36 Dolley Madison...39 Benjamin Lundy...42 Winfield Scott...45 David Glasgow Farragut...48 Brigham Young...51 Dorothea Lynde Dix...54 George Thomas...57 Philip Henry Sheridan...60 Helen Hunt Jackson...63 Blanche K. Bruce...66 Justin Smith Morrill...69 Elizabeth Cady Stanton...72 ii
Table of Contents Table of Contents (cont.) Carl Schurz...75 Alfred Thayer Mahan...78 Booker T. Washington...81 Terence Powderly...84 Samuel Gompers...87 Charles William Eliot...90 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr....93 George W. Norris...96 John J. Pershing...99 Charles A. Lindbergh...102 Arthur Vandenberg...105 Douglas MacArthur...108 Ronald Reagan...111 U.S. History Outline Map...114 Bibliography/Further Reading...115 Answer Keys...118 iii
Introduction Introduction Students can better understand the world today by learning about the people of yesterday and knowing that they were real people, just like you and me. Through the following sketches of the lives of some of these people, the learner identifies with them as real people. There was never any thought of ranking famous Americans. The principle followed is that there be a happy mix of some of the titanic figures of American History and some of the lesser ones. So it is that here appear the names of Benjamin Franklin, Dorothea Dix, Booker T. Washington, David Farragut, Joseph Warren, and dozens of other biographies. These deal briefly and concisely with people who helped make the republic great. These biographical sketches act as a springboard for student learning. They are simply starting points for student involvement. Time lines are included in each chapter to give students additional information about the subject and time period. This book supports No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and is correlated with the National Standards for History (NSH) and the National Council for Social Studies (NCSS ) curriculum standards. The Historical Fact section of each unit may be used to help the student gain depth in factual knowledge. The Questions for Research section offers alternatives to the teacher s own choices for supplemental investigations. Some research possibilities are offered; in other instances, it is suggested that the student find some particular historical fact concerning the biography under study. The encyclopedia or the Internet can be used to acquire additional information, as well as the American Heritage Collection and the Dictionary of American Biography. If these are not available in the school library, then your local public library likely has them. References for further reading for those who become interested in finding out additional information about a particular famous American are included in the back of the book. There is little that is more important for an American citizen to know than the history and traditions of his country. Without such knowledge, he stands uncertain and defenseless before the world, knowing neither where he has come from nor where he is going. With such knowledge, he is no longer alone but draws a strength far greater than his own from the cumulative experience of the past and a cumulative vision of the future. John F. Kennedy iv
Time Line Time Line Take note of the accomplishments and lifespan of the individuals highlighted in these pages. Use this list to help you understand historical sequence and where each of the famous Americans fits in this time line of historical events. The events listed cover five to twenty-year time spans. 1600 Settlement in Jamestown; Pocahontas marries John Rolfe; the first slaves appear in America. 1620 Mayflower Compact ; Boston Latin School is founded; Harvard College is founded; Roger Williams winters with the Narragansetts. 1640 Old Deluder Satan Law; Scots-Irish begin to arrive in numbers; Maryland Act of Religious Toleration 1660 First Indian Bible; Quakers are persecuted in Virginia; French expand settlements into Illinois; postal service is established from Boston to New York; smallpox epidemics occur in the Colonies. 1680 Charleston, South Carolina, is founded; William Penn establishes a government for Pennsylvania; French-Indian raid on Schenectady; Salem Witchcraft Trials are held; William and Mary College is founded. 1700 Yale is founded; the Boston Newsletter is the first newspaper; Pennsylvania (Kentucky) rifle developed; Mother Goose rhymes appear. 1720 Continued arrivals of many Germans in Pennsylvania; the Great Awakening, led by Jonathan Edwards; Benjamin Franklin writes Poor Richard s Almanack. 1740 Benjamin Franklin invents a new stove for women ; Princeton is founded; Independence Hall is built in Philadelphia; the first general hospital in Philadelphia; King s College (Columbia University) is founded. 1760 Colonial population is now 1,600,000; Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon begin a survey; the Treaty of Paris ends the French and Indian War (Seven Years War), which had partly been fought in the Colonies. 1765 The first medical school in Philadelphia; John Singleton Copley shows his paintings in London; British troops are quartered in Boston. 1770 Boston Massacre; a stagecoach travels from New York to Philadelphia in one and one-half days; Charles Wilson Peale becomes a promising artist and paints the first of his portraits of Washington. 1775 Thomas Paine writes Common Sense; Virginia abolishes the slave trade; Phi Beta Kappa is founded; Declaration of Independence and the War of Revolution take place. 1
Time Line Time Line (cont.) 1780 Noah Webster publishes The American Spelling Book; Franklin invents bifocals; Treaty of Paris ends the Revolutionary War. 1785 Georgia establishes the first state university; increased numbers of Scots-Irish begin to arrive, many of whom are well-educated; U.S. Constitution is written; news arrives of the French Revolution. 1790 Population is nearly 4,000,000 (almost one-fourth African-American); Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin, which firms up slavery as an institution; war in Europe Washington proclaims neutrality; the Genet affair occurs. 1795 Gilbert Stuart launches his career of pictures of George Washington; undeclared naval war with France; the iron plow is invented; Johnny Appleseed spreads goodwill and apples. 1800 The Library of Congress is established; the capital is now at Washington, D.C.; the Louisiana Purchase; the Jeffersonian Revolution begins; there is continued trouble with warring powers of Europe. 1805 Noah Webster composes his Dictionary; Robert Fulton constructs the Clermont; Lewis and Clark Expedition; Zebulon Pike sights his peak; the African slave trade is forbidden. 1810 The first orchestra in the United States is founded in Massachusetts; the National Road is under construction; Benjamin Rush writes Diseases of the Mind; War of 1812; The Star-Spangled Banner is written by Francis Scott Key; Washington is burned, but Baltimore is saved. 1815 Baltimore is lighted by gas; William Cullen Bryant composes Thanatopsis ; settlers flock to the Military Tract in Illinois; Territory Unitarianism emerges in New England; financial panic occurs. 1820 Rip Van Winkle is written; the Monroe Doctrine is proclaimed; Old Democracy (Democratic Party) begins to split; the first free public library is established in New Hampshire. 1825 John Quincy Adams is now in the White House; the Erie Canal revolutionizes western trade; James Fenimore Cooper writes The Last of the Mohicans; John James Audubon publishes his first important book on wildlife. 1830 The Mormon Church is organized; Peter Cooper builds the first steam-driven locomotive, called Tom Thumb, in New York; Cyrus McCormick invents a reaper; Oberlin College is the first coed college in America. 1835 George Bancroft writes History of the United States of America; Mt. Holyoke is the first women s college; Asa Gray publishes a botany text; Goodyear vulcanizes rubber. 2
Time Line Time Line (cont.) 1840 Horace Mann establishes educational reforms; Dorothea Dix works to improve prisons and insane asylums; Crawford Long uses anesthetic (ether); Ralph Waldo Emerson publishes essays; Samuel F.B. Morse sends the first telegraphic message. 1845 Edgar Allan Poe writes The Raven ; Joseph Henry, one of America s great scientists, begins a weather bureau; Elias Howe builds a sewing machine; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow writes Evangeline ; the War with Mexico is fought; gold is discovered in California. 1850 The Compromise of 1850; Herman Melville writes Moby Dick; Franklin Pierce is elected president; trouble begins in Kansas; Uncle Tom s Cabin is written by Harriet Beecher Stowe. 1855 Walt Whitman, J. Russell Lowell, and Oliver W. Holmes all publish important works; oil is discovered in Pennsylvania; Abe Lincoln campaigns against Stephen Douglas in Illinois; John Brown attacks Harpers Ferry. 1860 Abraham Lincoln wins the presidency; the secession of the South and war begins; Morrill Act is passed; Vicksburg and Gettysburg battles take place; General Tom Thumb visits the White House. 1865 Lincoln is assassinated; the Civil War ends; the formation of the Westinghouse Air Brake Company; first intercollegiate football game is played; the new president, Andrew Johnson, gets into trouble with Congress. 1870 James McNeill Whistler paints a picture of his mother; Saint-Gaudens shows statue Hiawatha ; the Chautauqua movement begins. 1875 Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone; Mark Twain publishes Tom Sawyer; Thomas Edison invents the phonograph and the light bulb; Frances Willard presides over the Women s Christian Temperance Union; Ulysses S. Grant is in his last years as U.S. President. 1880 Booker T. Washington founds the Tuskegee Institute; Clara Barton founds the American Red Cross; James Garfield is elected president; the American union movement grows. 1885 France gives the United States the Statue of Liberty; Samuel Gompers founds the American Federation of Labor; Jane Addams establishes Hull House in Chicago; Chester Arthur finishes his term as president. 1890 Women s suffrage begins in Wyoming; basketball is invented; Columbian Exposition in Chicago; Henry Ford builds the first car; William Henry Harrison is president. 1895 Mary Baker Eddy founds the First Church of Christ Scientist; the first comic strip is written; John Philip Sousa composes The Stars and Stripes Forever ; John Dewey begins a school revolution; Hawaii is annexed. 3
Time Line Time Line (cont.) 1900 Yellow fever is diminished by Walter Reed s efforts; William McKinley is assassinated; the first transatlantic radio broadcast occurs; the first successful airplane flight; Teddy Roosevelt catches the nation s fancy. 1905 The San Francisco earthquake; Theodore Roosevelt is elected for a second term; the Model T Ford revolutionizes the auto industry; Robert Peary reaches the North Pole. 1910 Andrew Carnegie gives huge sums of money to philanthropic enterprises; Muckrakers and the Progressive Movement are in full swing; William Howard Taft is in the White House more trusts are broken; Federal Reserve System is established. 1915 Edgar Lee Masters writes the Spoon River Anthology; John J. Pershing chases Pancho Villa; Pulitzer Prizes are begun; Woodrow Wilson wins the Nobel Prize; World War I is underway, and the United States enters the war in 1917. 1920 Warren G. Harding is elected in a landslide; slight economic recession; Sinclair Lewis writes Main Street; Teapot Dome Scandal; radio is becoming more commonplace. 1925 Calvin Coolidge is in the White House; the first successful talkie, The Jazz Singer; Charles Lindbergh flies the Atlantic; the Holland Tunnel is built. 1930 Herbert Hoover is in the White House, and the Great Depression is underway; Show Boat is a big Broadway hit; Amelia Earhart flies the Atlantic; Franklin Roosevelt wins presidency in 1932. 1935 Dust storms in the West; George Gershwin writes Porgy and Bess; Will Rogers is killed; the New Deal is at its apex; Carl Sandburg writes Abraham Lincoln, The War Years; Hitler begins Germany s expansion. 1940 FDR gives the Four Freedoms speech; Japanese attack Pearl Harbor; U.S. geared to war; John Steinbeck is the leading American writer; the first nuclear reaction; Normandy landings occur in 1944. 1945 War with Germany ends; new antibiotics, penicillin and streptomycin, are discovered; Roosevelt dies; Harry S Truman is the new president; Truman confounds polltakers by winning the presidency in 1948; William Faulkner wins the Nobel Prize. 1950 The Korean War begins; George Marshall wins the Nobel Prize; Dwight D. Eisenhower wins the presidency; the Korean War ends. 1955 Russia shocks the world by launching the first satellite; the Salk polio vaccine now virtually eliminates the dread disease; Little Rock civil rights crisis occurs; Alaska and Hawaii are admitted as new states; Nikita Khrushchev visits the United States. 4
Time Line Time Line (cont.) 1960 John F. Kennedy is elected; Kennedy is assassinated in 1963; Lyndon Johnson is now president, and a huge poverty plan is initiated; the first U.S. space flight; the Vietnam War speeds up. 1965 Civil rights and anti-war riots spread; Lyndon Johnson is elected for second term; Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated; Vietnam is now taking a heavier toll; Robert Kennedy is assassinated. 1970 Richard M. Nixon is now president; he begins to wind down the war in Vietnam; Governor George Wallace is shot; Watergate, along with the eventual resignation of President Nixon; President Ford now occupies the White House; oil embargo. 1975 The draft ends; troops are finally withdrawn from Vietnam and prisoners are returned; assassination attempts on President Ford; U.S. celebrates Bicentennial; Jimmy Carter elected president; Panama Canal treaties; Iran hostage crisis. 1980 Ronald Reagan elected president; hostages released from Iran; assassination attempt on President Reagan; SALT talks with U.S.S.R.; U.S. troops invade Grenada; Reagan is reelected; AIDS virus is discovered; first space shuttle flight. 1985 President Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev hold summit meetings; U.S. warplanes bomb Libya; Iran-Contra scandal; George H.W. Bush is elected president; prodemocracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in China; U.S. invades Panama; Berlin Wall falls; Exxon Valdez oil disaster in Alaska. 1990 Persian Gulf War; former Soviet countries become independent; Hubble Space Telescope launched; Los Angeles riots after beating of Rodney King; Bill Clinton is elected president; siege at Waco, Texas; Whitewater Scandal; Clinton is reelected. 1995 Oklahoma City bombing; O.J. Simpson murder trial; President Clinton is impeached but not removed from office; the Unabomber is caught; Columbine High School shooting spree; construction of International Space Station is started 2000 Y2K scare proves groundless; mapping of human genome is completed; George W. Bush is elected president; September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; U.S. troops invade Afghanistan in War on Terror; U.S. troops invade Iraq; President Bush is reelected. 2005 President Bush begins second term; War on Terror continues in Afghanistan and Iraq; democratic elections take place in Afghanistan and Iraq; Ronald Reagan named The Greatest American ; Hurricane Katrina devastates the Gulf Coast of the United States; gas prices at all-time highs. 5
Roger Williams Roger Williams 1603 1683 Roger Williams was born in London to a middle-class family who had obtained some financial success in business. That he did not come from poorer classes is indicated by the fact that he was educated at Cambridge University, where he was a student of the great lawyer, Sir Edward Coke. His years at Cambridge tended to firm up Williams non-conformist beliefs in regard to the established Anglican faith. Not too long after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth in New England, Williams sailed for the New World, arriving in Boston in 1631. He refused offers to become the minister in one Boston church, but in 1633, he went to Salem to minister to a congregation in that town. Almost immediately, he began to cause trouble with the authorities one leading Puritan referred to Williams as unsettled in judgments. Not only did he champion the Native American cause, but he began to attack the relationship between the local government and the church what today would be called a theocracy. Williams argued for tolerance based upon human dignity and pushed for the separation of church and state. By 1636 (the same year as the founding of Harvard College), Williams had overdrawn on the patience of the Puritan oligarchy. Forced to flee, he spent the winter with the Narragansett tribe. From this tribe, he obtained a land title to what was to be most of Rhode Island. In this area, he set up a colony that was more tolerant and that did allow for a separation of church and state. In 1639, Williams became a Baptist, a creed that advocated adult immersion and denied the power of the state over matters of conscience. In 1643, Williams returned to England to seek a charter for his new colony. It was during this time that he wrote The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience. The sense of this publication was that (1) all governments were the creatures of men and existed upon the consent and welfare of all men, and (2) rulers were only servants of the people and no more entitled to decide the truth in religion than anyone else. Upon returning to the Colonies, Williams continued to serve the Rhode Island settlements, and from 1654 to 1657, he acted as the president of the settlement association. The tolerance implicit in the Rhode Island charter brought other dissidents to the colony. Mrs. Anne Hutchinson was one a determined woman who argued that scholarly insights and good works mattered very little in achieving individual salvation. What was important was God s grace, which fell by divine choice upon such individuals as herself. Mrs. Hutchinson founded the town of Portsmouth in Rhode Island. She eventually moved to New York where she died during a Native American raid. There seemed to be contradictions between some of Williams contentions and his actual life. When Native Americans in New England under King Philip arose, burned dozens of towns, and killed several hundred settlers, Williams joined with colonial forces as a soldier, even though he was well into his seventies. King Philip s War, as the conflict was called, resulted in the final elimination of the Native American problem in New England and the death of King Philip himself. Philip s wife and children were sold into slavery. All in all, Williams made two major contributions to American life the separation of church and state and religious freedom. 6
Roger Williams Roger Williams (cont.) TIME LINE 1603 (?) 1631 WILLIAMS BANISHED FROM SALEM 1643 KING PHILIP S WAR 1683 WILLIAMS ARRIVES IN BOSTON 1636 WILLIAMS SEEKS COLONIAL CHARTER 1675 QUESTIONS FOR RESEARCH 1. Shortly after the establishment of Rhode Island as a colony that tolerated other religions, an event occurred in England that decreased the level of tolerance in that country. What was it, and in what ways was there more intolerance? 2. Williams had received an excellent education in England, but he was only one of the colonial leaders having that benefit. Research the education of other colonial leaders. Research the educational levels of the ordinary New England settlers. 3. Shortly after the establishment of Rhode Island, another toleration colony was founded. What was it, and just how tolerant was it? NATIONAL STANDARDS CORRELATIONS NCSS Ve: (Individuals, Groups, & Institutions) Identify and describe examples of tensions between belief systems and government policies and laws. NSH Era 2, Standard 2: How political, religious, and social institutions emerged in the English colonies WEBSITES http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/re101.html America as a Religious Refuge: The Seventeenth Century, The Library of Congress http://www.yale.edu./lawweb/avalon/states/ri04.htm Charter of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations July 15, 1663, The Avalon Project at Yale Law School 7
Name: Date: Roger Williams Roger Williams (cont.) HISTORICAL FACTS 1. Where was Roger Williams born? 2. Where did he go to school? 3. What was his profession? 4. Where and when did he arrive in the New World? 5. Did he like the Native Americans? 6. What recommendation did Mr. Williams make about church and state? 7. In the winter of 1636, with whom did Williams spend the winter? 8. What did he obtain from them? For what place? 9. To what place did Williams return in 1643? What did he seek? 10. What two major contributions did Williams make to American life? 11. What other dissident came to the Rhode Island settlements because of the tolerance in its charter? 12. Williams joined the colonial forces as a soldier in what war with Native Americans? 8
Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin 1706 1790 Benjamin Franklin was one of the great men of his age. Along with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton, he was among the leading Americans of the Revolutionary and post-revolutionary periods. Franklin was born in Boston, the 15th child in a brood of 17. His father was a chandler; his mother was a strict and authoritarian woman. Although Franklin attended school for a time long enough to prove himself an undistinguished scholar he withdrew and went to work for his father. Continuing to be an omnivorous reader, he consumed books on algebra, geometry, navigation, grammar, logic, science, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Latin. At 12 years of age, he was apprenticed to his brother James, a printer. Aspiring to write, he produced a series of articles under the pen name of Mrs. Silence Dogood. James, not knowing that Benjamin had written them, printed the articles in his paper. Eventually, after his identity was discovered, Franklin fled to Philadelphia. Now 17, he worked as a printer and managed to buy a press in 1730. His newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, quickly became a success due to its style and wit. His eventual marriage to Deborah Reed proved to be a happy one only to a degree. Deborah was inclined to nag, simply because she did not understand the extent of Franklin s ambition. In 1733, he began the publication of Poor Richard s Almanack, an annual accomplishment that kept him busy for years. Meanwhile, his fertile mind and unending energy led him into other projects. He was Philadelphia s postmaster for a time and improved on the mail service. He established special messenger services between certain cities. He started the world s first subscription library. He organized a fire department. He reformed the city police and commenced a program to pave and light the streets of the town. He led the fight to establish a hospital in Philadelphia, and he helped to found the American Philosophical Society. Later, he studied the relationship of electricity to lightning and conducted his famous kite experiments to prove his point. In between times, he studied the flow of ocean currents, invented a new kind of stove, and brought bifocal glasses to the Colonies. The list of accomplishments in Franklin s life had only begun. He persuaded the British government to drop the Stamp Act. When the Colonies chose the path of independence, he helped write the Declaration of Independence. When the Colonies needed military help, he went to France and persuaded that government to send troops and supplies. In the Constitutional Convention of 1787, he was the sobering voice of compromise. His last public act was to sign an appeal to Congress calling for the abolition of slavery in America. He died in April 1790. Approximately 20,000 people attended ceremonies in Philadelphia in his honor. He was buried in Christ Church Cemetery. In anticipation of this event, Franklin had even written his own headstone inscription. 9
Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin (cont.) TIME LINE FRANKLIN S SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH FRANKLIN DECLARATION ESTABLISHES OF 1706 PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE INDEPENDENCE 1787 1790 1730 1740 FRANKLIN STOVE 1776 CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION QUESTIONS FOR RESEARCH 1. What were the essential elements for success, as described by Franklin in his Autobiography? 2. What were Franklin s major contributions toward the uniting of the Colonies and toward the writing of the Declaration of Independence? 3. Franklin s personal characteristics were in perfect harmony with his goal of obtaining French aid for the American cause. What were these personal characteristics? NATIONAL STANDARDS CORRELATIONS NCSS Vf: (Individuals, Groups, & Institutions) Describe the role of institutions in furthering both continuity and change. NSH Era 3, Standard 1: The causes of the American Revolution, the ideas and interests involved in forging the revolutionary movement, and the reasons for the American victory WEBSITES http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/declara1.html Declaring Independence: Drafting the Documents, The Library of Congress http://www.ushistory.org//franklin/index.htm The Electric Franklin, Independence Hall Association http://www.ushistory.org/valleyforge/history/franklin.html Franklin s Contributions to the American Revolution as a Diplomat in France, Independence Hall Association 10
Name: Date: Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin (cont.) HISTORICAL FACTS 1. Where was Benjamin Franklin born? 2. How many brothers and sisters did Franklin have? 3. How was he educated? 4. At age 12, he became an apprenticed. 5. Franklin used the name as his pen name when he wrote a series of articles published in his brother s paper. 6. At age 17, Franklin moved to. 7. In 1733, he began publication of. 8. Name at least three other projects in which Franklin was involved: (1) (2) (3) 9. What was his most famous scientific experiment? 10. What important historical document did he help write? 11. When the Colonies needed military help against the British, where did Franklin seek help? 12. Franklin s last public act was to sign an appeal to Congress calling for. 11
Historical Facts Answer Keys Historical Facts Answer Keys Roger Williams (p. 8) 1. London, England 2. Cambridge University 3. minister 4. Boston, 1631 5. Yes 6. separation 7. Narragansett tribe 8. land title for Rhode Island 9. England, charter 10. separation of church and state, and religious freedom 11. Anne Hutchinson 12. King Philip s War Benjamin Franklin (p. 11) 1. Boston 2. 16 3. self-taught 4. printer 5. Silence Dogood 6. Philadelphia 7. Poor Richard s Almanack 8. improved mail service, special messenger service between cities, world s first subscription library, etc. 9. famous kite experiments with lightning and electricity 10. Declaration of Independence 11. France 12. abolition of slavery James Otis (p. 14) 1. West Barnstable, Massachusetts 2. Harvard College 3. lawyer 4. British Writs of Assistance 5. customs officers 6. colonial merchants 7. Stamp Act 8. Townshend Acts 9. Massachusetts colonial government 10. rescind 11. British revenue officers 12. insane 13. killed, lightning 14. taxes Joseph Warren (p. 17) 1. Roxbury, Massachusetts 2. Harvard College, Boston physician 3. physicians 4. Stamp Act 5. president of the Provincial Assembly 6. Massachusetts colonial militia 7. American Revolution 8. Breed s Hill, Boston Harbor 9. 50 10. 1,000 11. sharpshooters 12. Bunker Hill Ethan Allen (p. 20) 1. Litchfield, Connecticut 2. New York, New Hampshire 3. Green Mountain Boys 4. 100 pounds 5. Fort Ticonderoga 6. Boston 7. Montreal 8. Vermont 9. Vermont militia 10. British, traitorous 11. farming, revolution 12. publications 118